I never go back on my words
by RinneRikudo
Summary: One-shot. He was tired, broken, the will of fire in him was dead. Orphan from always, hated by everyone, alone, convicted for a load he didn't choose to carry on. Naruto writes a letter, explaining why he choose, with the little strength he has left, keep the first, last, and only promise he had made to himself (violence at the end).


**Attention: **English isn't my native language, but I think I did a good translation of my fic in Spanish. Enjoy it.

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**Naruto's POV.**

Who am I?

That's very difficult to answer even for me, I don't even know if the question is well formulated, since all the villagers refer to me as a thing, then it should be something like _What am I?_, or so I think, but isn't like if I were very smart.

Who am I?

A question I ask myself for quite some time, actually I don't know the right answer, but I'll try my best to respond.

My name is Naruto, just Naruto. Today October 10 newly turned 13 years old. Last name? I don't have, I don't know if I could say I had one once: Namikaze, or also Uzumaki. But, I only had that identity for a few minutes.

Family?

I haven't, I'm an orphan. Well, I neither know if I can call my biological parents my family, Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki, current Hokage. 13 years ago, when the Demon Fox attacked the village, the day I was born with my twin brother Menma, they used a strange jutsu or something like that to seal the half of the Fox with the God of Death, but they had to seal the other half in someone, specificallya newborn baby, and the only options available were Menma and I, guess who they chose. Hurray for me.

Why I have no family?

When the Fox was sealed inside me, something happened. My hair went from being blond to be reddish, like my eyes, previously blues, and now reds. My pupils turned elongated, and grew three marks on each of my cheeks, my chakra disappeared or at least did it for a while, and the only chakra that was left in my body was from the Kyūbi. From that moment ''I died'' and the Fox took my body, or that's what my parents thought.

_—That's not my son, not anymore, it's the fucking demon!  
_  
Ironically, they were the first ones who hated me. I still remember the exact words of my father, pointing me with his index finger, disgusted, and ready to kill me if it hadn't been for the jiji. Those words torment me in some of my nightmares, the kind I've every time I go to sleep, I'm afraid to close my eyes when I have to rest, but always ends up earning insomnia. I also remember those words whenever I saw the other children, holding hands with their parents; I watched them from the swing where I always used to sit in the park, alone.

I don't understand why those words affected me so much, after all, he never was anything for me, we never were anything . Unlike the rest of the village, he never looked at me with hatred, but does with indifference. Anyway, it was clear he always despised me. But, he said nothing to anyone about something that I was his son, nor ever identified me as the Fox, he always gave to understand to the villagers I was only the jinchūriki of the Kyūbi, I never knew why. However, he never defended me from the villagers, who viewed me as a ''monster'' since they knew that the real monster was sealed in me.

If my mother also had said something like that in front of me, for sure I would remember it, but she didn't. In that moment she fell unconscious after holding the Kyūbi with some weird strings coming out from his back, and after that I don't remember having seen her until the Academy, looking at me as the same way than my father.

How do I know all this, if it happened when I was just a baby?

It was one of the few advantages of having a demon fox sealed within you; you can get to know a lot of things you didn't know before, a lot of things you had wished not having ever heard.

I still remember the day I met him when I was seven, impossible to forget that. I just slept one night and when I woke up, I wasn't anymore in my apartment. Everybody say the true beauty of people is interior, in what we are inside and not how we look on the outside. Does that mean then that my true beauty was in a room full of stranger sewers and leaking pipes, with a large dark nine-tailed fox locked in a titanic cage? My luck really sucks, Kami-sama hates me with all his strength.

Going back to the first time I saw him, I felt very scared, but, wouldn't you be afraid having in front of you the most powerful Tailed Beast in the Earth, and not also the friendliest? I already knew it he was inside me, jiji explained it me as best as he could when I was only 6 years old, it was better than I found out through his mouth the load I had, and not from the people who always called me ''monster'' or ''demon'', without knowing why they acted like that with me, until that moment.  
_  
_The Kyūbi mocked me when he realized I was there, he arose, and said a few things that don't come to my mind right now.

_—Come here, brat._

I obeyed, insecure, and when I was close to his jail, he struck his claws against the bars of the prison. I fell back, screaming. Of course he only wanted to give me a scare, he couldn't kill me because that's meant he would die too. At least he took care about me, apart from the jiji, he was the only one who took care of me. Of course he just did it only for his own interests, but with the little I had, that was enough for me.

After that, I started to feel all fuzzy. The underpass where we were began to be distorted, except for the cage, to switch to an open field with another Kyūbi imprisoned by some long chains. It was a memory from the past.

_—This happened the day you were born.  
_  
I don't need to tell you what happened next.

If you're interested, but I don't think so because nobody really cares about me, I didn't know how to react, at least at first. When I returned to the outside world, I lay on my bed, thinking. Rare thing in me because I never thought anything, I was very stupid.

I cried.

I cried for hours, I spent all night clutching my pillow, squeezing strong my chest where my heart was, or what was left of it, because was broken into a thousand pieces.

_—Why don't I have a mom or a dad, jiji? _

I always asked the same question to the old men, when I still didn't know anything about my parents, when I thought they were dead, even though I knew I would get the same answer as always.

_—We have talked about this, Naruto._

I had the illusion my parents would return sometime, which they would return and we would be a happy family, typical dream of an orphan boy like me. Despite the abuses and injustices I suffered, when I slept, rather than plunge into a dark and gloomy world, that colorful dream was the most common dream I had. In some of them, one or both of my parents had ''survived'', in others the attack never happened and we three were living happily together, what those dreams had in common was always one thing: my smile.

A true and genuine smile, not a fake smile like when I walked through the village or in the class of Iruka-sensei at the academy, was a smile free of falsehood. I loved to sleep, because sleeping I could escape from the reality and fled to my own fantasies, where nothing could go wrong.

Then the dreams became nightmares.

Friends?

Yeah, good joke. Who would want to be friends with the demon child?

I was close to make friends many times, but whenever my ''quasi-friends'' approached to me with his parents on the site, they scolded them and gave them very strong punishments. In a short time, I became a repellent for all of them, those who knew about the fox stayed away from me, afraid of what was inside me. It wasn't fair, I didn't ask to be his container, I didn't ask for ''save the village'' in the words of the old man. I didn't choose this life.

Those who didn't know about him, also stayed away from me, they didn't know about the Kyūbi possibly because by then they were very small, but of course their parents warned them not to approach to me, or so I think.

Although, how they wouldn't know that the Kyūbi was sealed in me? Heck, if there was even a movie in the cinema, ending in ''and the Fox was defeated and imprisoned in a human body deprived of his power after having been turned into a child. The demon boy, his name: Naruto''.

Many kids used to call me ''monster'' just for fun, repeating the words they heard from the adults, words which they were ignorant of its true meaning. Words they didn't know the effect they could cause.

Words that tear my soul everytime I hear them.

Not all the guys hated me, to three boys didn't bother I were with them, and their parents either. Those guys were Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Chouji, and Inuzuka Kiba. But when the afternoon finished, they always go back to their houses, hand in hand with his parents, reminding me what I hadn't and never would. We weren't very close friends, or not as much as I had wanted.

Instead hating my family, as any normal person would have done in my place, when I entered the Academy I tried to befriend Namikaze Menma, my twin brother, as by chance we played in the same classroom. How stupid I was.

Menma was a good person, blond and blue-eyed as I was once. He was funny, hyperactive, really was stunning the resemblance between us, we were very similar. Even though I was the eldest brother, he was taller than me, which isn't surprising because I was the lowest in the class. But how I wouldn't be the lowest, when all I ate every day was instant ramen and a bowl of milk? Is not that I didn't like to eat other things, the ramen was delicious but eat that always bored a little, but it was all that someone sold me, and that someone was Teuchi-san with Ayame-san at Ichiraku's, the rest of the premises in the Village always drew me to kick, they were unwilling to sell something to a ''small pimp'' like me. For Kami, was a fortune that someone has sold me at least the orange outfit I always use, even if it cost me a fortune considering it was used clothing. I didn't know what a vegetable stand, much less a restaurant was. I didn't know how the interiors of the enclosures in the Village were, none of them allowed me to passage.

Well, the point is that Menma didn't rejected me like the others, at first I thought I had really done my first true friend, and it was nothing more nor less than my brother. Until one day, he just didn't speak to me. I tried to talk with him, but he began to avoid me like the rest. It became obvious for me it reached to the ears of ''our'' parents a warning from a fool villager about the friendship I started having with him, or maybe from some annoying teacher, and have been punished for approaching me. The same old story, it kept repeating no matter with whom or in what situation.

It was a vicious circle...

The following week was his birthday party number 9. I kept yet the hopes he would invite me, or even talk to me, explaining me that I couldn't go due to the prohibitions of his parents. He didn't, neither one nor the other. He just ignored me. Anyway, I wouldn't go even if I could, October 10 wasn't a date where my popularity was very high.

But he invited the whole class.

After that I stepped away from him, because I realized the existence of the wall between us, a wall that was built from the day we were born. He was destined for the things I had always wanted; he was destined to be a big and recognized hero, maybe the next Hokage, when I would only be the pariah of the village forever.

He was the true reflection of the life I could have had.

Special people?

The jiji, he never left me, he was the first for me and I am sure that, unlike my parents, he never thought I was the demon fox. If he had, I wouldn't have protected and cared like he did or tried to do.

Iruka-sensei, the only teacher who was just with me, even the jonin-sensei of my current team, Yūhi Kurenai showed some kind of attachment to me like him, but neither any kind of rejection. Iruka-sensei, even having lost his parents in the attack of the Fox, he never mistreated me or saw me as a demon. On the contrary, he became like the father I never had. He constantly visited me for got me out of my lonely condition, besides paying a lot of ramen dishes for me at Ichiraku's, perhaps more than his salary would allow.

And finally, Teuchi-san and Ayame-san, the owner of Ichiraku's and his daughter. Besides being the only ones in the entire village who sold me food, they always supported me and encouraged me to become the Hokage. There were several times they gave me special ramen, even desserts, all for free. Not only that, I was chased by angry mobs of villagers willing to end my life twice, always the same date, October 10. The second time, they gave me their protection and I hid in the depths of Ichiraku's, knowing the risks that entailed for them, and they did it anyway.

The first time I didn't run the same fate, but I managed to escape, they didn't reach me a single hit, but the damage they caused me was emotional. An open wound that would heal very hard. I hid in the hollow of a tree in the deep of the forest, holding a tiny sponge cake with a candle in it, a jiji's gift.

_—Happy Birthday to m-me..._

These are the words I remember saying, crying. I asked myself tearfully why my life had to be like this, and then I fall asleep, shivering a little because it was cold, very cold.

Dreams?

If I can't even sleep at nights...

If you mean some goal, I do have one, or had: be the next Hokage.

I never left anyone break me in 10 years of pain and loneliness. They took me away many things, took away my hopes, took away my childhood, but they didn't take away my goal: become the Shadow of Fire.

Everyone respected the jiji, whenever he was with me the people treated me with less contempt, and never dared to refuse or reproach something somehow when he was present. He was recognized. I wanted to be recognized like him, so I said to myself and shouted from the rooftops that I, Naruto, would become the next Hokage, and then I wouldn't be alone anymore, I would have many friends, everyone would have to treat me well, and the whole world would have to respect me, not just Konoha.

Nobody could take away my dream... Until that incident.

What happened?

My birthday number 11, two years ago. I regret have stayed home that day, even though that was the safest option. I remember I took a glass of water, which has been strangely served in one end of the room, I didn't take importance to that and I drank it. In just a few minutes I felt very tired, despite being just 10 in the morning. I decided to ignore my instinct and I went to the bed. By then I had no such fear to sleep.

I woke up later, and suddenly I found myself in front of a few people, all wearing dark clothes and having big smiles, they seemed malicious. The village was visible in the distance. I don't want to talk much about what happened, so I will be direct and I will summarize it.

I was crucified; they used kunais to nail my hands against the wood of the cross.

They used a whip; they whipped me for hours while I was pleading them with the little strength I had to release me, to let me go, that I wouldn't tell anyone what happened. They laughed at me. I was beaten. I was humiliated. I was tortured in different ways with different instruments.

The sun was beginning to hide; I must have been at least 6 hours in that hell. In the end, with the hopes of surviving lost or even continue living if those persons let me go, I asked them to kill me; I couldn't bear this pain anymore, not only physical but emotional, because I realized that I would never be accepted, that I would always be the ''demon child'' and nothing more than that. I wish they had killed me that day.

The men urinated me, laughing, boasting of their actions, ''the terrible Kyūbi'' pleading mercy, they mocked. The women laughed of me too, proud of themselves. When they decided to kill me, they dropped the cross carelessly and they tied me to a branch of a tree, used a Katon jutsu and burned the tree on fire waiting calcine me slowly, they lay down on the grass for watch my last suffering, for see me scream for a last time. But I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel any type of pain, at least not in my body. The only emotion I felt, if it can be call it like that, was relief. Relief because everything was going to end, that wouldn't be more suffering. Finally my pathetic life would come to his end.

But the Kyūbi didn't want to die.

Not knowing how or when, I began to surround myself with a red chakra, I again feel pain because it was even hotter than the flames that were beginning to catch me, the ninjas got on alert immediately. Before losing consciousness I thought I saw four tails from that powerful energy growing up behind me, releasing me from the ropes that bound me.

I woke up a few hours later, and the first thing I saw was the darkening sky and a full moon, listening the howling of the wolves, that froze me to the bones. I got up slowly, with the view somewhat clouded, my body was sore but not so much, being the jinchūriki of the Kyūbi wasn't all bad, I was tortured and I was almost as if nothing had happened. For a moment I thought I'd woken up from one of my worst nightmares, so I got up at all and I started walking until I stepped on something. I looked at the bottom of my shoe, and recovering the vision completely, I screamed in sheer panic falling to the ground when I noticed what was.

It was an eye.

I looked at the scenery; the green lawn of a few hours ago was now decorated with a sweet crimson tint. Every last one of the finest leaves were now painted with a chilling blood-red, the smell in the landscape was rotten. The Shinigami had definitely visited the place. I turned to try to understand what had happened, looking for something, and it didn't take me too long for find that something. Incomplete bodies scattered all over on the place, as well as some animals from the forest devouring them, fighting each other to satisfy their hunger. I didn't need to be a genius to conclude from who they were or what had happened.

I'd not reacted yet, when I noticed my clothes: instead of the typical orange I was expecting to find, I found the same reddish hue. The worst thing of all is that all my wounds were closed due to the healing powers of the Fox. That meant that it wasn't my blood.

If anyone had seen me in that moment, besides any doubt about the situation in which I was intruded, at first glance they would have asked me why my costume had orange spots.

And I cried, I cried for hours there no matter the slaughter that was around me. I cried there in the middle of what seemed to have become into a Spartan battle field. And I kept crying, lying on the floor crying because I had caused that massacre, because it was me the one who killed those people. The only thing that kept me away of falling into paranoia was the belief that I wasn't the Nine-Tailed Demon, I was Naruto. But under these conditions, affirm that was very difficult, by no saying impossible.

After all, I really was a monster, maybe not the demon fox, but I was a monster.

The sun was beginning to peek through the mountains and I was still there, crying. I don't know how he did it, but the jiji found me, he got me out from there and took me to his house, and he asked me for explanations after, but I didn't want to remember, I refused, and the old man understood me. He knew what had happened, he had seen all the weapons and torture devices around me when he found me, he didn't need to ask questions. It became our secret, and he ordered to his staff most trusted ANBU to clear the scene.

And then the nightmares began...

Up to that point they were only occasional, but after that torture. I relived again and again every time I was going to sleep the smallest detail of the atrocity to which I was subjected. And not only that, also the worst episodes of my life, the maltreatment, the abuses, the bans, my childhood, everything came back to my mind at nights. But the worst of all was to find myself in that blood extension with the bodies from the people who caused me so much suffering literally torn to pieces, reminding me of my sins, reminding me that I had killed them. The taunts and insinuations of the Bijū inside me didn't help at all.

_—__Now do you get it Naruto? —_He often wondered me, behind the prison that held him captive. He was taking advantage of my weakened mental state_ —; you are me, we have always been one. Just let yourself go, with my power... No, with our power, we will make pay to all these disgusting cockroaches for what they have done to us._

He always posed for me that tempting offer, but I refused. Become the Kyūbi, be the Kyūbi, means I would have to hurt Hokage-jiji, it means I would have to hurt Iruka-sensei, to Teuchi-san, to Ayame-san. I would never hurt them, I swore to protect them. I made that promise to myself, the only one I've done, because at first I only wanted to be Hokage to be recognized, but later I realized I wanted to become Hokage for maintain that goal, to maintain that commitment, to protect my loved ones.

And I never break my promises, and I never will.

And to keep that promise, two years after the event that made me open my eyes, is for what I write this lines. I feel I'm about to fall into madness, I never leave my apartment. I have fear of everything and everyone, afraid to go out in the streets of the village and find more looks of hatred, afraid of being tortured so inhumanly once more. I'm afraid of the world, of this cruel, sadist, and painful world.

But above all, it has begun to surface in me a feeling I never had allowed me to feel in my short life, _hatred_. It wouldn't be long before I fall into the evil clutches of the Kitsune, who feed my hate with his own influence.

To keep that promise is for what I, Naruto, have decided to end my life, before being consumed by the mass of hatred that the Kyūbi was by the wish of revenge that began to arise in me, and finish hurting my beautiful people, the only beautiful people I have ever had and probably the only I would have if my heart continue beating. Because I can be many things, really I don't know what actually I am, but I'm very sure of something.

I never go back on my words, and I never will. That's my ninja way.

Jiji many thanks, you took care of me and protect me as if I were your own child. Do not blame yourself, none of this was your fault, you did the best you could do and that's why I owe my life to you, if it'd not been for you, years ago I would have been underground in a tomb.

Iruka-sensei thank you very much, you were the best teacher I had in the school, the only one who treated me well and comforted me in my worst days, you will always be in my heart, I will never forget you.

Thank you very much Teuchi-san, thank you very much Ayame-san. It will never vanish from my mouth the delicious miso ramen you cook, the best of all Konoha, really! Thank you very much for everything you did for me, thanks for never leave me and cast me aside, like most people, just thanks.

Dad, Mom, brother. If you read this, I want to tell you I forgive you, I forgive to all of you. I know very well that you never had the intention to happen any of this. I know very well that you always loved to Uzumaki Naruto, that you wanted to have a happy life with me, or him, that you wished we had been a happy family, the family we should have been. But it happened the attack of the Kyūbi...

It's for that I forgive you. If you repent of what you did, I want to say you I love you, I love you to you three. I can't love you as I love the old man, Iruka-sensei or the persons from Ichiraku's, but nonetheless, I love you.

Thank you very much for everything, for the moments we never had, but I would have liked to have. See you in the another world, I hope we can be the family we never were there. I hope we can be there what we couldn't be here. I leave this world before I become what is inside me. I leave this world to protect you from myself. I go, before I stop being me, and become something worse, much worse, something that only cause more pain and sorrow to the mankind.

Sayonara.

Naruto. Forever and proudly the number one knucklehead hyperactive ninja of Konoha.

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Well, first at all like I said before English isn't my native language, but I did my best to translate this fic I did in Spanish.

Not much to clarify regarding the fic... I think everything has already been said, I hope you have enjoyed the one-shot, I think it has been my best work so far. It's like a fanfic of my other fanfic ''Brothers: Six Paths and Two Powers'' (in Spanish ''Hermanos: Seis Caminos y Dos Poderes'') as it develops in the same universe, but different denouement. So if you want to know more specifically why Naruto suffered these changes and why he was abandoned, you can check the fic in the Chapters I and II, where it is well detailed. But it would be only like a supposition, because the world of this fanfic is completely separated from the other and has no spoiler on it.

If you have any correction to make, please let me know to improve the fic. Leave your reviews, Goodbye!


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